每日简报

平均处理效应的回归调整插补估计量AI 解读

Imputing missing potential outcomes using an estimated regression function is a natural idea for estimating causal effects. In the literature, estimators that combine imputation and regression adjustments are believed to be comparable to augmented inverse probability weighting. Accordingly, people for a long time conjectured that such estimators, while avoiding directly constructing the weights, are also doubly robust (Imbens, 2004; Stuart, 2010). Generalizing an earlier…

面板数据的异质性合成学习器AI 解读

In the new era of personalization, learning the heterogeneous treatment effect (HTE) becomes an inevitable trend with numerous applications. Yet, most existing HTE estimation methods focus on independently and identically distributed observations and cannot handle the non-stationarity and temporal dependency in the common panel data setting. The treatment evaluators developed for panel data, on the other hand, typically ignore the individualized information. To fill the gap,…

混杂情形下离策略评估的工具变量方法AI 解读

Off-policy evaluation (OPE) is a method for estimating the return of a target policy using some pre-collected observational data generated by a potentially different behavior policy. In some cases, there may be unmeasured variables that can confound the action-reward or action-next-state relationships, rendering many existing OPE approaches ineffective. This paper develops an instrumental variable (IV)-based method for consistent OPE in confounded Markov decision processes…

利用观察性、有偏与随机化数据学习反事实推断的界限AI 解读

We address the problem of integrating data from multiple, possibly biased, observational and interventional studies, to eventually compute counterfactuals in structural causal models. We start from the case of a single observational dataset affected by a selection bias. We show that the likelihood of the available data has no local maxima. This enables us to use the causal expectation-maximisation scheme to compute approximate bounds for partially identifiable counterfactual…

条件增量效应的非参数估计AI 解读

Conditional effect estimation has great scientific and policy importance because interventions may impact subjects differently depending on their characteristics. Most research has focused on estimating the conditional average treatment effect (CATE). However, identification of the CATE requires all subjects have a non-zero probability of receiving treatment, or positivity, which may be unrealistic in practice. Instead, we propose conditional effects based on incremental…

一般处理模式下双重差分的有效处理方法AI 解读

We consider a general difference-in-differences model in which the treatment variable of interest may be non-binary and its value may change in each period. It is generally difficult to estimate treatment parameters defined with the potential outcome given the entire path of treatment adoption, because each treatment path may be experienced by only a small number of observations. We propose an alternative approach using the concept of effective treatment, which summarizes…

预算约束下的 PAC-Bayes 处理分配AI 解读

This paper considers the estimation of treatment assignment rules when the policy maker faces a general budget or resource constraint. Utilizing the PAC-Bayesian framework, we propose new treatment assignment rules that allow for flexible notions of treatment outcome, treatment cost, and a budget constraint. For example, the constraint setting allows for cost-savings, when the costs of non-treatment exceed those of treatment for a subpopulation, to be factored into the…

个性化政策分析中的特征选择AI 解读

In this paper, we propose Forest-PLS, a feature selection method for analyzing policy effect heterogeneity in a more flexible and comprehensive manner than is typically available with conventional methods. In particular, our method is able to capture policy effect heterogeneity both within and across subgroups of the population defined by observable characteristics. To achieve this, we employ partial least squares to identify target components of the population and causal…

可观测处理异质性下用于优效决策的贝叶斯多层多元逻辑回归AI 解读

In medical, social, and behavioral research we often encounter datasets with a multilevel structure and multiple correlated dependent variables. These data are frequently collected from a study population that distinguishes several subpopulations with different (i.e., heterogeneous) effects of an intervention. Despite the frequent occurrence of such data, methods to analyze them are less common and researchers often resort to either ignoring the multilevel and/or…

时间序列部分线性模型的同时推断AI 解读

We introduce a new methodology to conduct simultaneous inference of the nonparametric component in partially linear time series regression models where the nonparametric part is a multivariate unknown function. In particular, we construct a simultaneous confidence region (SCR) for the multivariate function by extending the high-dimensional Gaussian approximation to dependent processes with continuous index sets. Our results allow for a more general dependence structure…

中介与结果非随机缺失时的中介分析AI 解读

Mediation analysis is widely used for investigating direct and indirect causal pathways through which an effect arises. However, many mediation analysis studies are challenged by missingness in the mediator and outcome. In general, when the mediator and outcome are missing not at random, the direct and indirect effects are not identifiable without further assumptions. In this work, we study the identifiability of the direct and indirect effects under some interpretable…

结构线性模型中非高斯维数的稳健估计AI 解读

Statistical identification of possibly non-fundamental SVARMA models requires structural errors: (i) to be an i.i.d process, (ii) to be mutually independent across components, and (iii) each of them must be non-Gaussian distributed. Hence, provided the first two requisites, it is crucial to evaluate the non-Gaussian identification condition. We address this problem by relating the non-Gaussian dimension of structural errors vector to the rank of a matrix built from the…

多结果政策学习：结合最优政策树与多目标贝叶斯优化AI 解读

Methods for learning optimal policies use causal machine learning models to create human-interpretable rules for making choices around the allocation of different policy interventions. However, in realistic policy-making contexts, decision-makers often care about trade-offs between outcomes, not just single-mindedly maximising utility for one outcome. This paper proposes an approach termed Multi-Objective Policy Learning (MOPoL) which combines optimal decision trees for…

无需对工具变量平滑的部分线性工具变量回归AI 解读

We consider a semiparametric partly linear model identified by instrumental variables. We propose an estimation method that does not smooth on the instruments and we extend the Landweber-Fridman regularization scheme to the estimation of this semiparametric model. We then show the asymptotic normality of the parametric estimator and obtain the convergence rate for the nonparametric estimator. Our estimator that does not smooth on the instruments coincides with a typical…

多变量贝叶斯变量选择及其多性状遗传精细定位应用AI 解读

Variable selection has played a critical role in modern statistical learning and scientific discoveries. Numerous regularization and Bayesian variable selection methods have been developed in the past two decades for variable selection, but most of these methods consider selecting variables for only one response. As more data is being collected nowadays, it is common to analyze multiple related responses from the same study. Existing multivariate variable selection methods…

局部同时推断AI 解读

Selective inference is the problem of giving valid answers to statistical questions chosen in a data-driven manner. A standard solution to selective inference is simultaneous inference, which delivers valid answers to the set of all questions that could possibly have been asked. However, simultaneous inference can be unnecessarily conservative if this set includes many questions that were unlikely to be asked in the first place. We introduce a less conservative solution to…

收入生产函数的不可识别性AI 解读

Production functions are potentially misspecified when revenue is used as a proxy for output. I formalize and strengthen this common knowledge by showing that neither the production function nor Hicks-neutral productivity can be identified with such a revenue proxy. This result obtains when relaxing the standard assumptions used in the literature to allow for imperfect competition. It holds for a large class of production functions, including all commonly used parametric…

使用 polle 软件包进行策略学习AI 解读

The R package polle is a unifying framework for learning and evaluating finite stage policies based on observational data. The package implements a collection of existing and novel methods for causal policy learning including doubly robust restricted Q-learning, policy tree learning, and outcome weighted learning. The package deals with (near) positivity violations by only considering realistic policies. Highly flexible machine learning methods can be used to estimate the…

非平稳重尾时间序列的统计推断AI 解读

We consider the problem of inference for non-stationary time series with heavy-tailed error distribution. Under a time-varying linear process framework we show that there exists a suitable local approximation by a stationary process with heavy-tails. This enable us to introduce a local approximation-based estimator which estimates consistently time-varying parameters of the model at hand. To develop a robust method, we also suggest a self-weighing scheme which is shown to…

前向正交离差 GMM 与大样本偏差的消除AI 解读

It is well known that generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators of dynamic panel data regressions can have significant bias when the number of time periods ($T$) is not small compared to the number of cross-sectional units ($n$). The bias is attributed to the use of many instrumental variables. This paper shows that if the maximum number of instrumental variables used in a period increases with $T$ at a rate slower than $T^{1/2}$, then GMM estimators that exploit the…

概率分位数因子分析AI 解读

This paper extends quantile factor analysis to a probabilistic variant that incorporates regularization and computationally efficient variational approximations. We establish through synthetic and real data experiments that the proposed estimator can, in many cases, achieve better accuracy than a recently proposed loss-based estimator. We contribute to the factor analysis literature by extracting new indexes of \emph{low}, \emph{medium}, and \emph{high} economic policy…

具有协整关系的分数阶单整曲线时间序列AI 解读

We introduce methods and theory for fractionally cointegrated curve time series. We develop a variance-ratio test to determine the dimensions associated with the nonstationary and stationary subspaces. For each subspace, we apply a local Whittle estimator to estimate the long-memory parameter and establish its consistency. A Monte Carlo study of finite-sample performance is included, along with two empirical applications.

密度加权平均导数估计的小带宽渐近高阶改进AI 解读

The density weighted average derivative (DWAD) of a regression function is a canonical parameter of interest in economics. Classical first-order large sample distribution theory for kernel-based DWAD estimators relies on tuning parameter restrictions and model assumptions that imply an asymptotic linear representation of the point estimator. These conditions can be restrictive, and the resulting distributional approximation may not be representative of the actual sampling…

超级服从者：同时响应资格与受益于处理的群体AI 解读

In a binary-treatment instrumental variable framework, we define supercompliers as the subpopulation whose treatment take-up positively responds to eligibility and whose outcome positively responds to take-up. Supercompliers are the only subpopulation to benefit from treatment eligibility and, hence, are important for policy. We provide tools to characterize supercompliers under a set of jointly testable assumptions. Specifically, we require standard assumptions from the…